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Rickshaws Coming to Coney Island

It might not be rational, but I don’t feel comfortable riding through Midtown in a pedicab—like I’m some kind of sultan, or something? And so you probably won’t find me riding in a rickshaw when the hand-pushed vehicles come to the Coney Island boardwalk this summer.

They’re slightly different from your classic Chinese rickshaw: these are more like unmotorized golf carts, pushed from behind. Still popular in Atlantic City, the Postreports, these carts have a history in Coney Island, where they were used to shuffle tourists around from the 1920s through the 1960s.

“We want to bring history back to Coney Island,” a co-owner of Ocean Rolling Chairs-Coney Island told the paper. (He also happens to be the grandson of reputed hot dog inventor Charles Feltman.) 100 carts will be run the length of the boardwalk, from Seagate to Brighton, two-and-a-half miles that’ll cost $1/block, with timed rates also available. Back in the first half of the 20th century, it cost $1/hour!